God can use anything, even the worst of things, for some good end. God used the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt as the occasion to lead the people into freedom by crossing sea and desert. God used the defeat of Israel at the hand of the Philistines as the opportunity to raise up King David. God used the Babylonian exile to purify the worship of Israel. Of course on this day, this Good Friday, we recall how God used the truly horrible suffering and death of Jesus to bring about the salvation of the world. So we can trust that God can use the pandemic to bring about some good end as well. The problem, of course, is that we have no idea what that good end of God might be. We are in the middle of the corona virus without the consolation of knowing how it comes out. We have to live in the meantime. On this Good Friday we turn to the Scriptures, to the Bible, to help us understand the mystery of Jesus’ death leading us to life. We can apply some of those Good Friday lessons to our current situation.
The Prophet Isaiah writing six centuries before Christ described the actions of a figure called the Suffering Servant which the Church used to interpret the passion of Jesus. The servant, according to the prophet, is not wallowing in his current suffering but is focused on the future. “Because of his affliction he SHALL see the light.” “Through his suffering, my servant SHALL justify many.” “Because he surrendered himself to death, he SHALL take away sins.” In a similar way what Jesus went through was not the end in itself but pointed toward something more. Suffering only becomes valuable when it leads somewhere. That serves as a reminder to us that during this time we need to keep our focus on the future, on what SHALL be. Becoming obsessed with current difficulty can send us spiraling down. Knowing that the sun will come out tomorrow provides the proper orientation that God continues to be at work.
In the second reading, the epistle to the Hebrews, we have one of those strange moments in the Bible. The author seems to be describing the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane: “Christ offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears.” We know the content of those prayers and supplications from the gospels. Jesus prayed, “If it were possible, let this cup pass from me,” make this cup of suffering go away. Here’s the kicker: according to the epistle “He was heard.” His prayers and supplications were heard. But of course the cup did not pass him by. He had to drink fully from the cup of suffering. Yet he was heard, not perhaps in the way that he expected but in the new thing God was doing that we await on Easter Sunday. So with us. When we offer prayers and supplications, when we make loud cries and shed tears, we can be sure that God hears us. Things might not turn out as we might have hoped but we can trust that God’s will for us shall always be for the best.
What strikes me in the passion story as told by St. John is that Jesus holds onto himself and his values the whole time. They can’t arrest him until he insures that his disciples can escape. He does not let the temple guards bully him. He stands up to the Roman governor, to Pilate. Even from the cross, while going through immense agony, he takes time out to make sure that his mother is taken care of. That says to me that Jesus is modeling that no matter we are going through during the pandemic, not matter what we have to endure, we do not lose our worth, our value, our dignity. We might have to respond to governmental orders, we might not be able to attend church, we might have to protect ourselves from nasty bugs – but no matter we are still ourselves, children of God, made in God’s image and likeness, precious in God’s sight, destined for glory. No one or nothing can take that away from us.
Church, on this strange Good Friday we can be confident that God will bring this time when we feel so disoriented and out of sorts to come to some good end just as God did on that first Good Friday. But in the meantime, until that good end comes about, we must keep our eyes focused on the future, we must pray with confidence that God always hears us, and we must not lose the sense of ourselves as more than conquerors because of him who has loved us. We do this because God has promised that even in the midst of a pandemic all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
